Author and GQ editor Michael Hainey comes to Chicago

Deputy GQ magazine editor Michael Hainey's "After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story" is a love letter to a bygone era when America's (and Chicago's) newspaper industry was booming. It's also the intriguing and sometimes heart-wrenching -- but never overly emotional -- saga of a son searching for truths about his father that were buried for decades. Some thought for good.

Hainey's dad, Bob, was a former Sun-Times night copy chief who worked hard, played hard and died at the age of 35. The circumstances surrounding his death, however, remained a mystery to most until Michael began sniffing around. Over the course of ten years, during which the author endured a good amount of evasiveness and outright stonewalling (a sort of journalistic version of omerta) and ultimately gleaned surprising revelations, he finally was able to sort fact from fiction. His accounting of the hows, whats, whens, wheres and whys makes for a damn fine read -- one the earned a starred review from Kirkus and raves from lots of others. It's in stores and on cybershelves February 19.

Be on the lookout for a Q&A with Hainey -- a graduate of the Medill journalism school at Northwestern and an erstwhile Park Ridge resident -- in the Sun-Times Books section on Sunday, February 24 (online earlier). And later this month, Hainey arrives in town for not one but FIVE appearances at various venues.